Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am going to speak out in support of this tax. As leaders, we are put in a position to make tough decisions, decisions such as taxing our own people. It is not a good thing but as a government, we need the money. As the Minister indicated earlier, we cannot continue pulling from within. You pull from within and promises that are made by this government may suffer.
I come from a community and a constituency that is beautiful. There is great potential for tourism in Tu Nedhe. If it cannot bring the tourists into the North, then my people cannot realize that potential. I am one of the persons in this House that supports the tourism industry. It is a clean, healthy way of generating revenue. However, we are in the middle of nowhere in the High Arctic, where even Canadians do not know where we are. How are we to expect the Germans, the Italians, the French, the English, the Japanese, the Australians and people around the world to know where we are at if we do not tell them? We cannot tell them where we are at unless we have the money to get there to have the promotional material. We need money for that.
Unfortunately, it seems taxing our people is one of the very few solutions we have to this dilemma. Lutselk'e has a flight in everyday, twice a day on Wednesdays and Fridays. Ninety percent of the time those planes are full. A lot of that travel is paid for by the government because it is related to business. I do not mind the government taxing itself if I could get my hands into that pot so that I could bring tourists into my region so that people could work. I do not have a problem with that.
I do not have a hotel in my constituency. Maybe if we could bring in the tourists, it would justify a hotel. It is badly needed, Mr. Speaker, but we have no money. We cannot do it right now. We have no money. That is the favourite word this government has.
We have to take a leadership role and make some tough decisions. It is a sad day when you realize that most of the people who will be paying this tax are your own people and in three years time, the federal government is going to claw back 80 cents. It is a sad day when this government has to tax itself for 20 cents on the dollar, Mr. Speaker. That should be a message directly to the federal government. It is a sad day when we have to tax ourselves for 20 cents on the dollar, Mr. Speaker.
My honourable colleague from the Mackenzie Delta alluded to the royalties that are being taken off this land. It is the relationship we have with the federal government. Maybe in three years time when they start clawing back 80 cents on the dollar, they will be negotiating the transfer agreement and they will take that into consideration. We are hard up for money in the Northwest Territories. Our people are hard up in the area of education, in the area of health. We need a lot of money.
I support this tax. I may be ridiculed by some of my people, but that is a leadership position I am taking. It is needed. We cannot bring in tourists otherwise. I am sure there are going to be administration problems with it, but there are always administration problems with anything new that you introduce. Other jurisdictions right across the country use it. We do not even consider it when we are paying for our hotel bill in Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver or anywhere else. I suspect it is $5.00 extra a night for this.
There are a lot of tourists who go into the Lutselk'e area, but those tourists are from Yellowknife. They go there by boat. They do not even come to my community. If they do, they just buy gas. They do not go to the stores. We cannot depend on tourists like that to survive. We need tourists from other areas of the world who are willing to spend money in our communities. We need to attract them. If a five percent tax on our hotels is one way of doing that, then I have no choice but to support it. The community of Deninoo K'ue, or Fort Resolution, is not a participant in the diamond industry. It is not a participant in the oil and gas industry. They have to rely on tourism.
Like I said, Mr. Speaker, we have to get the tourists here before we can start generating revenues from them. It is a tough decision but that is the way it is. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
-- Applause